There have been a few unconfirmed sightings of Ryan but as
yet his whereabouts are unknown. The following account is a brief summary from
the website Ryan's family started for him, please visit it to learn in much more
detail about Ryan's story.

Ryan and
his friend, John Booker flew out of
Adelaide on 19 June 2005 for Kuala Lumpur. After they
spent the night there with a friend they arrived in Chennai, India on the 20th, planning to spend
8 months in the country.

Ryan and John arrived in
Rishikesh about 20 August 2005. On the
evening of 23 August 2005 Ryan rang home to Australia and said he was was ready
to come home as he had seen everything he wanted. John offered to help him book
flights at the travel agency but it seems Ryan had changed his mind by then. He
was restless that night and early the next morning he left the Ashram when the
security gate was opened. He was wearing only shorts. Ryan left his belongings,
cash, phone, passport and no one has heard from him since.

If you have any information at all about
Ryan's whereabouts please contact +61419725818 or
jock@ryanchambers.in or

1800 000 634 or 1800 333 000.

Lost on a journey to free his mind

By Neil McMahon - SMHSeptember 19, 2005

His last message was simple.

"If I'm gone, don't worry," wrote Ryan Chambers. "I'm not dead, I'm
freeing minds. But first I have to free my own."

For days beforehand, the 21-year-old Australian backpacker had hardly
slept, and his travelling companion, John Booker, wondered what was wrong. The
men were staying at an ashram in India, on a spiritual journey of sorts, which
was supposed to be coming to an end.

But four weeks ago he disappeared in Rishikesh - barefoot and shirtless,
and left behind his money, passport and mobile phone. He remains lost -
emotionally as much as physically, his parents believe - becoming one of those
Australians in peril abroad and cut adrift from his family - not by kidnapping
or natural disaster, but apparently by the troubles of his own mind.

Rishikesh has long been a magnet for Westerners. In 1968 it was to this
sacred city on the banks of the Ganges that the Beatles made their pilgrimage to
study transcendental meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. John Lennon
wrote a song there, The Happy Rishikesh Song. "Everything you need is
here," it went. "And everything that's not here is not there." In their
footsteps, thousands of travellers beat a path to the area. This year Booker and
Chambers did the same, their goals more prosaic.

The young men, friends since they went to kindergarten in Mount Gambier,
left Adelaide for India on June 20. They were not out to change the world; they
were just looking for an experience and an adventure. After two months they made
it to Rishikesh and settled in to the Sri Ved Neketan, an ashram offering daily
yoga and meditation classes.

They were happy, says Jock Chambers, who has just returned to Australia
after a fruitless search for his son. "Ryan had wanted to go to India for years
and John was of a similar mind. They were relaxed and having a great time."

But as the days went on, Booker started to worry. His mate did not sleep
for several nights. Chambers brushed off his concern, saying he was on holiday;
he could sleep when he wanted. One day, Chambers and a Spanish traveller went to
the home of an Indian family to see a baba, one of the orange-robed
spiritual figures common in the area. He returned to the ashram apparently
unsettled, telling Booker they had left because they felt uncomfortable, but did
not elaborate.

Booker later told Chambers's parents that Ryan was "not himself". Then, on
August 23, Chambers called home. His mother, Dianne, felt vague unease. "He
wasn't quite himself … he just said that he'd found everything that he was
looking for and that he was ready to come home," she says.

They expected him back soon. "We said, 'Give us a ring tomorrow and let us
know what your plans are'," says Jock Chambers. Back in Rishikesh that night,
Booker thought his friend was happier. They played music and Chambers wrote in
his journal. Booker, unwell, went to bed.

On August 24 Booker woke and went to an early yoga class. He assumed
Chambers was sleeping, but later realised he was gone - and learned, from the
employee who had opened the gates that morning, that his mate had walked out at
5am, wearing only a pair of blue shorts. By nightfall, Booker was worried enough
to call Jock and Diane. Within days, Jock Chambers flew to India to join Booker
in the search, later joined by Ryan's elder brother, Jarrad. With the help of
Australian consular staff, they blanketed the area with posters and alerted
police.

Nothing. Then, suddenly, a breakthrough: a week after Ryan disappeared
someone had seen him. "He walked into a temple about 10 kilometres from
Rishikesh," Jock Chambers says. There was relief at this news, tempered by
concern: he seemed distressed. "He was sitting down and he was delusional, which
would have been exhaustion from lack of sleep. The priest fed him and gave him a
drink, but he wasn't able to stay there so he left. And again the trail has gone
cold."

Chambers has not been seen since. His father believes he is still alive,
but under the influence of someone or something that has taken him from them.
"Ryan's always been spiritual and he's obviously looking for something but this
is totally out of character. He's not thinking straight because he wouldn't put
John through this and he wouldn't put his family through it."

For his mother, the battle is to focus on facts, not wild imaginings about
the fate of the youngest of her three boys.

"As a mother I don't go down the mental track that I've got two sons now
and not three. Each dead end you come to is not the end of the story; it's just
the end of a chapter."

3 years on, parents of missing Australian on their own

Posted
October 21, 2008 12:12:00 - ABCBased on a report by Jennifer Macey for
AM

The parents of an Australian man missing in India for three
years say they feel as though they have been pretty much left to fend for
themselves.

Ryan Chambers, 21, from Mt Gambier in south-east South Australia, was
travelling with a friend in Rishikesh at the foothills of the Himalayas in
northern India when he left his room early in the morning leaving all his
belongings, including his passport, behind.

Ryan's father, Jock Chambers, says after Ryan's friend phoned them to tell
them he'd gone missing the first thing he and his wife Diane did was contact
DFAT.

"I immediately arranged to go to India and I was there two days later, as
soon as I could," he told AM.

"And met with the Indian police a day or two later, consulate officers
came from New Delhi from DFAT, and for the next two-and-half weeks we searched
and checked out all around Rishikesh and couldn't find a trace of him."

When Mr Chambers returned to Australia, his wife contacted the Australia
Federal Police.

"We informed them that Ryan was missing and when asked where he'd gone
missing, Diane said India.

"And the lady said, 'Oh no, not India' as if it was the worst place for
anyone to go missing. And after three years, perhaps it is," he said.

Mr Chambers says the AFP has provided little assistance.

"The only thing they've ever done, to my knowledge mind you, is meet with
DFAT and put the missing notice and Ryan's photo on their website," he said.

"About a year later I even asked if they were able to help us by ageing a
photo of him so we could see what he would look like after 12 months, with long
hair, long beard.

"And with all their resources, all the government resources, they said
they did not have any capability to do and that referred me to a private
operator."

He says he and his wife had to do everything themselves.

"That's the way we chose to do it initially but there were no Australian
police there at all really," he said.

"We asked our investigation for the consulate officers from Delhi and they
just kept referring to private firms - we were under the impression back then
that it was all our cost.

"We paid for the Ganges to be checked three times and nothing found there.
But certainly no AFP officer went anywhere near India."

He added: "It's one of these things, we're an Australian family, we've got
an Australia citizen - our son - missing in India over three years.

"Every morning I get up at 4:30 and spend an hour on the internet, because
that's the only avenue we've got."

An AFP spokeswoman says the investigation into a missing person is a
matter for local police in the jurisdiction where they went missing.

She says AFP may assist in these cases if requested by DFAT, and that AFP
officers do not have any jurisdictional authority to investigate without a
request from police in that country.

DFAT has been contacted for a response.

Family continues search for lost son

Posted on November 7, 2008, 7:07am - the
Border Watch

The Mount Gambier family of missing man Ryan Chambers — who disappeared in
northern India more than three years ago — has created a
website in a renewed effort to find
their beloved son.

His father Jock Chambers, who is the executive officer of the Mount
Gambier Community RSL, yesterday urged people to send the website address to
everybody they knew in a bid to find their missing son.

“We hope that this will help find him,” Mrs Chambers said.

“It will certainly enable many more people in India to become aware that
Ryan is missing and that he has a family in Australia desperate to find him.”

The family — who is not willing to give up hope and believes he is still
alive — have tried Australian authorities, a private investigator, Rotary
International, Coca Cola India and State Bank of India in their search to find
Ryan, who was just 21 when he went missing.

Following his disappearance, an appeal was made through the local India
media and leaflets were distributed.

While the family’s hopes have been raised by a number of reported
sightings, sadly these have not been confirmed.

Mr Chambers said many people around the world had learned of the family’s
plight through the two web.

Ryan Chambers has not been seen
for 7 years. His family turned to social media to find him

EVERY morning before 5am Jock Chambers logs onto Twitter - but
it's not about posting his thoughts for the day.

Instead, Mr Chambers is checking for clues he hopes will help find his
son Ryan who went missing in India seven years ago.

The Mt Gambier father turned to the web after searches by Australian and
international authorities came up blank and now believes social media is the
best chance for families to track down loved ones lost overseas.

“DFAT helped out in the early days but that was about it,” he told
news.com.au. “And Interpol was no better. We contacted them initially but
didn’t hear anything for 18 months.”

Ryan is one of 12 Australians currently known to be missing overseas
by the AFP; thousands of other families make calls to the hotline every
year.

For the Chambers family, the agony started with a call from Ryan’s
travelling partner and school friend who woke to find he had vanished.

A guard at the ashram they had been staying at reported seeing Ryan
leave in the early hours of the morning wearing only a pair of blue shorts.

Mr Chambers flew to India within days of getting the call and spent
two weeks with Australian consular officials travelling around looking for
his son. Their search even included the Ganges River, but no trace of Ryan
was found.

After a second visit later that year and still no progress through
official channels the family decided to continue alone.

They started with a website,
ryanchambers.in, which documents everything known about his travels in
India and the more recent trips to find him.

There are also lots of photos of Ryan and a message board for people
to share information and support.

The family also posted several pages on Indian traveller’s website
India Mike.

“In the beginning we had lots of responses. Now people write to send
us good wishes or blessings and sometimes there are reports of sightings,”
Mr Chambers said. “Most of these have not led anywhere though because they
are always when people return from holidays, sometimes 10 or 12 months
later.”

A Facebook page they created for Ryan was instantly popular among the
Indian community, exactly the market they were trying to target. The page
had 6000 friends until it was hacked and taken down.

Mr Chambers also started following Bollywood stars and sports people
in India on Twitter, tweeting them the poster they had created of Ryan and
all the investigation details.

He also said they also give the poster to every Indian restaurant or
shop they visit.

“Just in case, you never know who in the Australian Indian community
know and if they will pass them on.”

More recently a documentary has been made about Ryan’s disappearance,
called ""Missing in the Land of Gods"
by Croation-born film-maker, Davor Dirlic.

Mr Chambers said that he and wife Dianne were approached by Dirlic
personally and are both happy with the end result:

“We just want it to make it over to India though because that’s where
it will really make a difference,” he said.

In the meantime he will keep rising before the dawn, keeping up his
vigil on the web.

“I always try to do something,” he said.

Here’s a message from the AFP:

If families have serious concerns for the safety and welfare of a
person, and their whereabouts are unknown, then they may immediately report
them missing to local police by filing a missing persons report. You do not
have to wait 24 hours to report someone as missing.

A missing person’s report must be filed at a local police station, you
will be asked to provide:

- a physical description of the missing person including
distinguishable features

- a recent photograph of the missing person

- where and when the person was last seen or heard from

- places the missing person may visit

- list of any medical problems or medications the person may need
names and contacts of friends associated with the person.